Its all in the family

Every once in a while I fancy myself to be a writer,and these are the tragic consequnces that follow:

The cleaver fell from my hands, I couldn’t believe what had just happened, he was dead, Jackie Jr. , the man who always said he would see me beg for my life was dead. It wasn’t always like this though Little Jackie as we used to call him used to be a pretty nice guy to hang out with, we used to practically do the town every night, that was until ofcourse I became a made guy in the North Jersey Mob.

They say my ascension up the ranks was fast, too fast for some people ,and evidently little Jackie was one of them, the day I was made captain of my own crew after Phil Luciano ate it in a run in with the cops was the day I should have realized that Jackie and I were finished.

Pretty soon there were rumors flying around that I was running my own operation out of the Jersey east end , running my own show and not kicking up the loot to the capo Carmine “Butcher” Salvatore. Don’t get me wrong, I was doing exactly that, I mean here I was literally busting my chops making money and Carmine wanted me to just hand it over to him, well that’s not how Nicky Blundetto rolls. But the fact that the word got out so fast meant that I had a rat in my crew, which was not surprising ,after all this ain’t the Costa Nostra of the 60s where Omerta actually meant something, these days made guys ratted out other made guys faster than that fat pig Carmine Salvatore could eat risotto, what was surprising though was when I found out that Little Jackie was the one ratting me out.

I should have whacked him them, I realized later, but in that moment I remembered all the times we had together, he was like a little brother to me, Little Jackie Junior , what I should have realized then was that this sibling rivalry had got dangerous.I let him go, I kicked him off my crew, but I let him live, thats when the trouble really started.The months that followed saw Little Jackie getting more belligerent and provocative in attacking what was mine, assests on both sides were being torched almost on a daily basis, it was clear to everyone that the flashpoint was inevitable

And so it happened that my crew was being faced down by Carmine’s entire North Jersey army, and leading that army was Big Jackie , Jackie Junior’s father, little Jackie had got promoted to second in command, my former position.I realized pretty soon that if I went the traditional route of squaring my crew of seventeen against the entire North Jersey mob of 30 full time soldiers and 50 associates I would not only lose, but most like before any other shot was fired I’d find myself being whacked by someone from my own crew.

Which is why I got friends of ours to send over a couple of cousins from Sicily, I got them strapped with a couple of Tec 9 sub machine guns and a pistol each and send them on a visit to Carmine and Big Jackie’s houses. The plan was to take out the entire top tier of the North Jersey mob before they were ready and in the confusion that ensured either make peace with what was left or take them out too.

All in all the whole thing went off pretty well, 7 pairs of gunmen did their hits almost simultaneously all over Jersey. Carmine, Big Jackie and 5 captains were sent on a permanent vacation, the last pair however did not do so well, Little Jackie managed to escape , some waiter at Vinny’s restaurant Napoli being the only casualty of that encounter.

The culling of the flock did have one good side effect though, I was the only leader besides Little Jackie left standing and pretty soon like happens with all sources of Power everyone coalesced either on my team or his.

I was now just one hit away from being undisputed Boss, but that’s when I got a visit from the commissioner, he looked the other way most times in return for paid vacations in the Bahamas but my Blood Bath in little Italy (which is what the press was calling it) had drawn a lot of attention, I was told that if I did not make peace with Little Jackie and stop the killing, the Feds would get involved and that would be bad for everyone’s business.

So I swallowed my ambition and Jackie his pride and Jersey was now ruled by two families, there was no way however that this dichotomy would last and so turf wars were constantly being fought, on a smaller scale no doubt, but it was an openly public secret now that there were just some parts of town where certain people were just not welcome.

Every war zone needs a Switzerland however and we had ours Napoli having the dual advantage of being exactly on the border of the 2 families territories and also having the best Schiacciata and Tortelli in town was the obvious choice for most sit downs and moderation of disputes.

Jackie Junior and I were supposed to have a sit down to talk about the new Federal zoning project and how best to share the profits, but it soon degenerated from there, things were said guns were drawn and in the ensuing mêlée Little Jackie the brother I always wanted ended up with a meat cleaver to the head.

I got out of Napoli as fast as I could dropping the cleaver down a sewer and driving straight home, the lights were off, which meant my wife Adriana was not yet home, good, I could get washed and changed without explaining the blood on my clothes.

An hour later as I was sitting on the couch sipping a cognac I heard the front door close, “Is that you Adriana? I’ve already eaten so don’t bother about me,just go to bed”, she did not answer, I guess she heard about the incident at Napoli , TV no doubt would have covered it by now, I guess I should explain, I turned around … “Honey..” the words never left my mouth and I never heard the shot of the bullet that came down the barrel of the Magnum pointed at me.